The uncontrolled reentry of Russia's stranded Phobos-Grunt spacecraft presented a moving target to satellite trackers just days before pieces of the botched Mars mission were expected to fall to Earth. The Russian space agency Roscosmos said Jan. 12 that while much of the 13,200-kg (6,000-lb.) spacecraft was likely to burn up during a fiery atmospheric reentry Jan. 15, as many as 30 chunks of the unmanned probe were expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere over a patch of the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa. However, the prediction came less than 24 hr. after Russia forecast the spacecraft's reentry over the opposite side of the ocean, just west of Indonesia. Cautioning that it is too soon to predict the precise time and place of impact, Roscosmos said on Jan. 6 that the dynamics of spacecraft deceleration in the Earth's atmosphere depends on a variety of factors. Chief among these, Roscosmos said, is the variability of the behavior of the atmosphere, which expands and contracts relative to the Earth's solar cycle. "The exact spot, the date and time of their fall is possible to predict, but not earlier than one day beforehand," the agency said.
Download from (depositfiles.com) or (filepost.com)
